Unfortunately our neighbors to the north will not be getting the full effect of Netflix, but they will be able to take advantage of its streaming service for a small fee. Netflix.ca will work with both PCs and Macs this fall.

There’s no real explanation why the company is not allowing for physical media to travel across the border, but there’s speculation that it could be for a number of reasons. Not having physical distribution centers will help cut costs during the expansion, but that’s just icing on the cake.

It honestly could do with the Canadian content laws, which may not effect the streaming video but would definitely effect physical content. Macworld says that these content laws “are well-known (at least among Canadians) for imposing strict requirements on the proportion of Canadian content that is made available through the media. That’s in addition to international copyright arrangements, which often cause programming to be available on Canadian networks at different times than their American counterparts.”

At the launch, the service will be English only, but Netflix intends on adding a French service at a later date. There’s no exact date for the launch, only the broad term “this fall.”